Mars 4.2: Distance To Mar

The project

The goal of the project was to find out the distance to different planets, by using a  pingpong balls to line up the diameter of the planet until its the same size. They four things that we measure were the diameter of the planet, distance from earth to the planet, distance from my face, and the distance from my face to the pingpong ball.

Data Cardboard Planets

Planet A: For planet A the pingpong ball was 30 centimeters away from my eyes and the planet was 40 centimeters away from my eyes.

Planet B: For planet B the pingpong ball was 37 centimeters away from my eyes and the planet was 460 centimeters away from my eyes.

Planet C: For planet C the pingpong ball was 31 centimeters away from my eyes and the planet was 300 centimeters away from my eyes.

Claim

The ratio between the distance and the pingpong ball be always be really close.

Example

If the pingpong ball was 40 centimeter away from my eyes, then the planet should be around 400 centimeter away from my eyes.

Significance

This relationship allows me to have a easy prediction for the distance of the actual planet us by knowing the distance of the pingpong ball. In order to do this measurement you need to find the diameter of the pingpong ball and the planet, and you would also need to know the pingpong balls distance.

Applying What I learned: Finding the distance to Mars 

In order to my the distance of Mars I need to know the diameter of Mars, and I know Mars is smaller than Earth so randomly chose a number for Mars thats smaller than Earth’s diameter.

Tobey measured the diameter of the ting ball (pin head) and he measured the distance of the pond ball under it match up with Mars.

It was 5000 times for the pin ball to match up with Mars. Therefore, Mars has to be 5000 diameters away from earth.

According to y calculation Mars is 60,000,000 kilometers from Earth.

Travel Time

It would take 43 days to get to Mars.

Nope, because it take ups about 2 month just to get to Mars and coming back to Mars is another 2 months, and you have to think about the cost and the food issue.